SoundCloud Improves Algorithm-Based Radio Stations Feature

SoundCloud has been through a lot of changes so far this year, adding a subscription service model to the already existing platform, and incorporating advertising a bit heavier than before. They’ve started working on how the next tracks via autoplay work, too, fundamentally looking to bring more to the site and service than ever before. The newest feature they’re adding to the site, however, might be one of the best additions to SoundCloud in quite some time.

Earlier this year SoundCloud launched the Station feature, which allowed users to access a radio stream of similar content from any track on SoundCloud. The feature has been available on the mobile app for a while now, and today they’ve launched an improved version of the feature that will users to do the same thing on specific artist or label pages on SoundCloud, similar to Last.fm. On a blog post on their website, SoundCloud explained, “The algorithm behind Stations serves content in a different way than the Suggested Tracks feature we recently launched.”

The post continues, “Stations serve a longer queue of songs that are a mixture of similar, new, and popular tracks related to the track or artist you started the Station from, for an experience closer to listening to the radio. If you have a SoundCloud Go subscription, tracks from the entire 125 million strong catalog will show up in Stations and Suggested Tracks. If you use SoundCloud for free, you’ll still be able to listen to tens of millions of tracks with both features.”

The update is now available on both iOS and Android.

Related: SoundCloud’s New Business Model, and the Problem with One-Size-Fits-All Music Streaming